Social Media Marketing Is a Joke - It's Time We Acknowledge It

The best thing that ever happened to social media marketing and advertising was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Simply because it laid bare what a lot of in social media advertising has identified for a lengthy, long time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are based mostly on imaginary users, and their integrity lies somewhere amongst Lucifer and that man who eats people's faces in the movies.

For advertising consultants this kind of as myself, recommending existing social platforms this sort of as Fb, Twitter, and Instagram has been progressively tough, due to the fact -fairly frankly- a lot of of us will not have confidence in the metrics.

And why need to we? Fb isn't going to.

This is from Facebook's 2017 SEC submitting (emphasis mine):

The numbers for our essential metrics, which incorporate our daily active users (DAUs), monthly active users (MAUs), and regular income for each consumer (ARPU), are calculated employing inside business info based mostly on the exercise of person accounts. While these figures are primarily based on what we feel to be reasonable estimates of our person base for the applicable interval of measurement, there are inherent issues in measuring use of our products across huge on-line and mobile populations close to the planet.
The largest info management business in the entire world says it doesn't truly know if its numbers are correct. Estimates? What marketing professional would like approximated outcomes right after the reality?

It gets even worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that duplicate accounts could have represented approximately ten% of our around the world MAUs. We feel the share of copy accounts is meaningfully larger in establishing markets such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as in comparison to more developed markets. In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that false accounts could have represented around 3-4% of our worldwide MAUs.
Permit that sink in. Facebook is admitting that "roughly" 10% of its month-to-month lively customers are bogus. Interestingly, they will not mention what proportion of their day-to-day lively users are fake.

And that's the dilemma with social media. You will not know what is actually real and what is actually fake anymore.

Social media has not been genuine for a whilst.

As entrepreneurs and advertisers, we pleasure ourselves on accuracy. In the olden moments of marketing and promoting, we obsessed above ranking numbers of tv exhibits, readership for print promotions, and supply achievement costs for direct mail.

In all situations, the platforms of the day have been intensely audited. You knew, with reasonable certainty, was the audiences ended up for any particular medium or channel since there was usually a stage of evaluation somewhere for the quantities.

Traditional media this kind of as radio, Tv, and print had been all around lengthy enough that there were hundreds of scenario studies one could research the achievement or failures of person campaigns. Because these mediums were part of the public file, it was easy to function backward to see what combine of media and price range labored and what did not.

As an business, we could rapidly create benchmarks for accomplishment - not just based on our private activities- but in the collective activities of very distinct approaches laid bare for every person to dissect.

Effectively, that  Make Short Engaging Videos on Tiktok  went out the window with social media.

Fb, Twitter, and Instagram's quantities were often a joke.

In days of yore, organization valuation was based on revenues, belongings, and human cash, and functionality.

That all modified when an individual came up with the concept of "daily lively end users."

The race to obtain users became the driving power for social media platforms in a way that we've never observed ahead of. Now, the obsession with user progress opened the door to advertising and marketing and advertising fraud on a scale that just was not achievable formerly.

Let us get one thing distinct: any platform that allows for men and women to create 1000's of bogus profiles so other individuals can buy likes, followers, retweets, or shares is harmful to advertisers and brand names alike.

Now, I comprehend that the phrase "makes it possible for" is undertaking a good deal of function in that sentence, so enable me increase a bit what I imply.

I never think I am going to get several arguments when I say that -regardless of what I feel of them- the most successful social media platforms on the world are also some of the most advanced technological enterprises on the earth. They have -arguably- some of the very best AI close to, as their complete enterprise versions revolve all around being capable to crunch figures, details, and obscure pieces of info hundreds of thousands of occasions a 2nd.

They are also massive firms, with an military of attorneys and IP bulldogs waiting to protect their brand against any hostile outside forces.

So describe to me, how is it, that even right after all we have observed in the news people can still acquire Facebook likes, or Twitter followers, or Instagram enthusiasts?

The cause: it was often a scam. And we received conned alongside with everyone else.

If your business is valued on your variety of users and the action of these consumers on your platform, what do you care if they are bogus or not? If you did, you'd retain the services of an armada of auditors to make certain the integrity of your userbase. I do not feel they ever did and will never do this.